Tag: Lending

U.S. credit unions in 2019 are far from the proverbial church-basement financial clubs – now, credit unions are a$1.5 trillionsector of the U.S. financial industry. Given the extent of the U.S. equality crisis, $1.5 trillion dedicated to affordable, sustainable financing would not only adhere to the1934 statutory missionthat binds credit unions to this day, but also make a heck of a difference for low-and-moderate income households. Do credit unions in fact adhere to their mission and thus earn the sweeping tax and regulatory benefits taxpayers provide to encourage them to do so? Anew Federal Financial Analytics study* finds that credit unions sadly fall far short. Continue reading “Do Credit Unions Give Credit Where Equality is Due?”→

After crafting the initial features of the post-crisis bank-regulatory framework, global and U.S. policy-makers were dumbfounded to discover that costly new rules changed the competitive financial-market balance. Mirabile dictu, when costs rose for banks, banks changed their business model to cling to as much investor return as possible instead of, as regulators apparently expected, taking it on the chin to ensure ongoing financial-service delivery at whatever pittance of a profit remained. As markets rapidly and in some cases radically redefined themselves, global regulators dubbed the beneficiaries of this new competitive landscape “shadow banks.” At themost recent meeting of the FSB Plenary, they changed shadow banks to the less stealthy moniker of “non-bank financial intermediaries.” A newBIS working papershortens the scope of shadow banking to “market-based finance,” going on to assess a fundamental question: does the transformation of financial intermediation from banks to non-banks alter the income and equality landscape? The answer: It’s complicated.Continue reading “This Little Equality Goes to Market”→